


We live through scars this time

by Mellaithwen



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Birthday Sex, Community: hc_bingo, Fluff and Angst, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 16:59:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4270950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mellaithwen/pseuds/Mellaithwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky tries to clear the nightmares out of his head with sex. Steve helps, and they both make a promise to one another. </p><p>
  <i>Bucky waits until morning, actual morning, when they’re both lying in bed, breathless and sated, before leaning in close, and saying, “Happy Birthday,” all whispered and slow in Steve’s ear, like it’s some obscene thing that’ll make Captain America blush.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	We live through scars this time

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be just happy birthday sex, but then angst happened, and then allusions to more angst and hurt/comfort and everything snowballed but luckily landed in fluffsville (I think)
> 
> Title from James Bay ~ Scars
> 
> This also fills the "begging" square on my hc_bingo card.

“Man down!” Bucky hears Nat cry out, her voice bursting through the comm’s before another bout of gunfire interrupts anyone else’s response.  Bullets crack through the air, but it’s no good, it’s too late.

 

The world around them is chaos and fire and flames and all Bucky can see is Steve. His body laid out, shuddering on the ground, just out of reach; abandoned in the street. His blood stains the sidewalk but he’s too far out and Bucky can’t move, he can’t get free, he can’t save him.

 

_“Please,”_ Bucky says, and that bastard, that _asshole_ , standing over him—he _laughs,_ and it echoes _._ Bucky tries to get up but then there’s a heavy boot on his cheek pressing him back down to the grounds. “He needs—please, just let me help him. _Please._ ” He keeps begging, to no avail. 

 

In the distance, Steve’s eyes flutter, but he won’t break eye contact. His mouth opens and closes but no sound makes it out alive, just _one last awful moan and_ —

 

“Steve!” Bucky shouts, suddenly upright in bed and breathing heavy, the sheets twisted around his ankles and an arm around his waist. Bucky fights it for all of ten seconds before awareness comes crashing down around him, and he can finally hear Steve’s voice over his own heavy breathing.

 

“Just breathe, I’m alive, _we’re safe_ , just, come on Buck, breathe in, and breathe out, see? In, and out.”

 

“Fuck.” Bucky manages when he thinks he has a handle on his emotions and his voice won’t break under the strain. “Sorry. I—I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s fine Bucky, just _breathe._ ”

 

They stay like that, huddled together in the pre-dawn light, until they’re both breathing in sync and that’s when Bucky finally looks at Steve. Really looks at him. Steve, who isn’t pale from blood-loss, bleeding out in the street, or on the quinjet, or on a stretcher. Who isn't not gasping for air because his lungs are shredded, and who's eyes aren’t glazed over in delirium. No, his eyes are bright and shining, and he’s healthy and whole, but he looks worried as hell and, maybe, a little guilty too.

 

“I’m good.” Bucky assures him, bits and pieces of the nightmare finally starting to fade. He reaches out and smooths down the soft stray hairs of Steve’s current bedhead. “I am, really.”

 

Steve doesn’t look convinced, so Bucky slides back under the covers of the bed they share, and kisses him instead, working his way down, first Steve’s lips, then nipping at the curve of his jaw, and still moving. Steve looks like he might protest, but Bucky’s methods of shutting Steve up are tried and true, and he needs this. They both do.

 

“Wait.” Bucky says all of a sudden. “The doctor cleared you right?”

 

“You mean for the field—?” Steve starts asking before he sees the way that Bucky’s biting his lip and looking up at him with flushed cheeks, reaching out to Steve with both hands. “Oh! Right. _Yes._ Yes he did. Strenuous activities are _a-go_.”

 

“Good, that’s great, because I want you to fuck me like it’s the fourth of July.” Bucky says with a low growl in Steve’s ear, before coming back up for air, and leaving a trail of bite marks along Steve’s clavicle.

 

Steve laughs, and watches as the digital clock on their bedside table shifts to 12:01am.

 

“Well, Bucky, it’s your lucky day.” He responds, like the sudden arrival of his birthday is just a happy coincidence. “Just need to get into my birthday suit.”

 

“Yeah? Let me help you with that.” Bucky says with enthusiasm, pushing Steve back against the sheets while simultaneously pulling at his boxer shorts with tremendous fervour, cotton tearing at the seams.

 

They fumble around on the bed, kissing and biting each other desperately. Steve’s right hand works hard to find the lube in the top drawer of their bedside table without looking, while the rest of his body is occupied. He finds it and grabs a hold just as the two of them break for air.

 

“I’d say _assume the position_ but you’re already—”

 

“Steve, I love you but I swear to god if you don’t shut up and— _Oh my god, yes._ ”

 

* * *

 

Bucky waits until morning, _actual_ morning, when they’re both lying in bed, breathless and sated, before leaning in close, and saying, “Happy Birthday,” all whispered and slow in Steve’s ear, like it’s some obscene thing that’ll make Captain America blush. 

 

(It does.)

 

He kisses him on the cheek and positions himself so that his head’s lying on Steve’s chest. For a moment, Bucky just listens intently to the drumbeat of Steve’s heart beating, the comforting _thump-thump, thump-thump_ almost lulling him back to sleep.

 

“Hey Buck?” Steve says then, running his fingers through Bucky’s short brown hair. Bucky makes a content sound to show that he’s awake, but makes no other effort to respond. He’s warm and sleepy and the love of his _goddamn_ life is lying underneath him, alive at 97—despite recent attempts to the contrary—when most of the people from their old neighbourhood never thought he’d make it past twenty.

 

“Just three more years 'til one-hundred.” Steve says, like he can hardly believe it himself, which, makes sense considering how Steve was awake and staring straight at Bucky when that bastard tried to carve out his—

 

“Hey, did you hear me?” Steve asks quietly, before Bucky’s thoughts can snowball back to that dark place. 

 

Bucky shifts then, craning his neck to look Steve in the eye, because if there’s one thing Steve Rogers won’t do, it’s back down from a challenge.

 

“Wake me up when it’s one-fifty.”

 

“One-fifty? You reckon we can make it that far?” Steve smirks, not for a second thinking he’d do it alone.

 

“Yeah, Stevie, I do.” Bucky says firmly, his eyes looking serious all of a sudden, though his expression remains fond. A combination synonymous with their relationship as a whole. “So no more pissing off mad scientists and super villains—” 

 

Steve replies by sighing in mock indignation. 

 

“—And no more jumping from tall buildings, or bridges, or planes, or … trains.” Bucky continues, trying hard not to falter on that last word as he rests his head back down on Steve’s chest. _Thump-thump, thump-thump._

 

“What if Doctor Doom tries to take over Manhattan again? Or Zemo?” Steve asks lightly, making sure not to reference their most recent adversary—aware of how much that fight still preys on Bucky’s mind. “Or Aliens rain down from the sky?”

 

“Let the Fantastic Four deal with it, or Spider-Man and his friends: Squirrel Girl or the one that wears a bucket over his head.”

 

“Nova?”

 

“Yeah. Him. Or the— _the tree_ , or the talking racoon, even!”

 

“I know you’re not normally this bad with names.” Steve says, with a small laugh, reaching out for Bucky’s right hand so that their fingers are intertwined. “And what’ll we do while everyone else is saving the world?” He asks, expecting a crude answer. Something like, they’ll be alternating between eating food and eating _each other_ for the foreseeable future. 

 

“Grow old.” Bucky says instead, out of the blue, his head tilted now so that he’s staring at their hands holding on to one another. He’s pointedly not looking down at the long jagged white scar on Steve’s chest that will have finally healed up and disappeared completely by this time next week—and he’s certainly not looking up at Steve when Steve doesn’t answer. 

 

_Oh._  

 

It’s the insecurity in Bucky’s voice that gives Steve pause, and the fact that Bucky’s been laying his head on Steve’s chest and listening to his heartbeat every morning for the last week. Ever since Steve got released from the hospital. Ever since their last Avengers outing left Steve bleeding out in the middle of the street, and all Bucky could do was watch while the Evildoer-of-the-Month kept him pinned, out of reach. 

 

_Don’t—don’t do this, please, just, just hang on, Steve look at me, please, I’m begging you_ —Steve remembers Bucky saying over and over again: in the quinjet, in the hospital. In their bedroom after…

 

Bucky shuffles back so that he’s sitting at Steve’s side, their shoulders touching with their backs to the pillows. Bucky doesn’t look up at Steve, but he doesn’t move away when Steve grabs his right hand again and squeezes. 

 

“Are you being serious?” Steve asks gently. Damn, he’d be lying if he said the thought had never crossed his mind, and god knows he wants Bucky to be safe and sane and happy more than anything else in the world.

 

“No. Yes. Maybe? I don’t know.” Bucky mutters, running his metal hand through his hair.  “What do you think?” Bucky asks then, biting his bottom lip.

 

“About early retirement?”

 

“Well, we are in our late nineties.”

 

“Aw Buck, you don’t look a day over _fifty-five_.”

 

“You’re an asshole.” Bucky scoffs, moving to get out of bed. “And to think I was gonna make you pancakes, but nope, not now. I take it back. I take it all—”

 

Steve leans over suddenly and grabs Bucky by the waist before he can get very far. Bucky falls backwards onto the sheets, his legs in the air and Steve’s arms still wrapped around him.  

 

“Don’t you dare.” Steve says, gripping Bucky tighter.

 

“Ugh,” Bucky groans. “Fine, I’ll still make pancakes.”

 

“The real kind. With milk and eggs—”

 

“And flour, and chocolate chips. Yeah, yeah, I know what you like, Rogers.” Bucky says, wriggling his eyebrows.

 

“And?”

 

“And? And what? And presents?”

 

“ _And?_ ”

 

“Spit it out, Rogers.” Bucky says. _Please, say it_ , Bucky thinks.

 

“Grow old with me.”

 

“Oh. That. Sure. Whatever. If I have to.” Bucky smirks and shrugs as though he hadn’t been the one to suggest it in the first place. As though hearing his own words coming out of Steve’s mouth, with Steve’s voice all steady and sure— _like a port in a fucking storm_ —doesn’t leave him breathless just thinking about it. 

 

Bucky wonders if Steve’s ridiculously good hearing has picked up on the hitch in his voice. He clears his throat.

 

“So to recap, you want pancakes.”

 

“Yup.”

 

“And the gift of my never ending companionship?”

 

“And fireworks. Don’t forget fireworks. You always get me fireworks for my birthday.”

 

Bucky remembers standing outside of Steve’s room at the hospital, eavesdropping on his conversation with Tony. Stark making small talk to hide his own anxiety, and promising the biggest fireworks display in history for Steve’s birthday—to rival the city’s own, and Steve saying, ever grateful, and ever kind, _“Thats okay, Tony, Bucky’s got it covered. ”_

 

“Well I can’t get the Steve Rogers Birthday Extravaganza started if you don’t let go.” Bucky says, gesturing to Steve’s arms still holding him tightly from behind—the both of them still sprawled on the bed.

 

“I’m sorry I scared you.” Steve says instead, wishing he didn’t have to say it at all, and loosening his hold on Bucky’s mid-section. He buries his face into Bucky’s shoulder and breathes in the familiar smell of smoke and sandalwood from Bucky’s shampoo. 

 

Bucky doesn’t answer, but he takes a deep breath of his own and focuses on the early morning sunlight shining through the gap in the curtains of their bedroom window. He thinks of the nightmare that woke him up in the middle of the night, and how he can still feel the warmth of Steve’s blood on his palms, while his own voice, broken and desperate, begs Steve to stay with him. _I can’t do this, not without you._

 

Steve’s warm breath tickles the small hairs on the back of his neck and Bucky fights the urge to get back into bed and just stay there all day. But no, he thinks, they’ll have plenty of time for that.

 

“Pancakes.” Bucky says, finally getting up, and turning around, leaning down and cupping Steve’s face in his hands. “Pancakes first, then presents, _then_ fireworks, then—”

 

“—the rest of our lives.” Steve finishes. 

 

“Sounds perfect.” Bucky agrees. 

 

 

.


End file.
